1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to a changer apparatus for a date library apparatus including a plurality of recorder and player apparatuses and a plurality of portable recording media, where the changer apparatus moves each of the recording media between its storing position and any one of the recorder and player apparatus. This disclosure also relates to a data library apparatus including the changer apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, the amount of data stored in a large-scale data center has rapidly increases, and accordingly, the amount of rarely retrieved data tends to also increases. A data library apparatus, which records the rarely retrieved data into a plurality of portable recording media stored in storing positions, has caught attention. The data library apparatus includes a changer apparatus including a carrier mechanism for moving each of the recording media between its storing position, and the recorder and player apparatus. The data can be stored for a long term with low electric power consumption, by using the recording media, such as optical discs.
As typical portable information storage media, optical discs have been known, such as a digital versatile disc (DVD) and Blu-ray (a registered trademark) disc (hereinafter, described as “BD”), etc. The optical discs are roughly classified into rewritable information storage media, such as DVD-RAM and BD-RE, and write-once information storage media, such as DVD-R, DVD+R, and BD-R. In addition, a new optical disc with an increased recording capacity over that of BD has been developed. Since the optical disc can store data for 50 years or longer, the optical disc is advantageous to a hard disc drive apparatus (HDD) or a magnetic tape (such as Linear Tape-Open).
With the recent increase in the capacity of the optical disc, the write-once optical discs which are less expensive than the rewritable optical discs have been increasingly used for archiving rarely retrieved data. As a data library apparatus using optical discs for archives and the like, an apparatus has been proposed that includes a plurality of optical disc drives, and handles a plurality of optical discs put into cartridge cases (hereinafter, referred to as “magazines”). For example, see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication JP 2015-111490 A.